by Sonya Clark
She said, “Has Ray talked to you about this weekend?”
He said, “I just got here myself. Hadn’t had a chance yet.”
“What’s this weekend? And what’s the word on the coroner? Officially speaking?”
“Preliminary says heart attack is the most likely cause of death,” Ray said. “That’s what I’m hearing, anyway. It’s been several hours since I spoke to anyone about it. This weekend.” He sighed heavily. “It’s the first Cavalcade pageant.”
Harriet leaned her elbows on the table. “That means the children under twelve. It’s at the convention center, most of the day Saturday. I went through the records and checked. Every age group she was entered, Britney Parker won. I don’t think the family bought it for her, either. Her pictures were beautiful, even in those years most kids are awkward.”
“Everything going on might keep people away,” I said.
Harriet smiled. “Clearly you were never part of the pageant world. The families who want their kids in it will be there. Do you think this is something she’s likely to show up at, considering her history with it?”
“Could be. She hasn’t been angry at every appearance, has she?” I directed my question at Ray. Not that I was trying to cut beauty pageant expert Harriet out of the conversation or anything petty like that.
“No,” he said. “A lot of them but not all. Sometimes she’s just there. Watching. Trying to communicate, maybe.”
“I was hoping you’d be willing to provide security,” Harriet said. “Your kind of security.”
“You want me to keep a ghost from crashing the kiddie beauty pageant?”
The skin around her eyes tightened, accentuating the tiny lines. “That’s exactly what I want you to do.”
Harriet might not have found me amusing but the grin was back on Ray’s face and that was worth pissing her off. I said, “Then I’m gonna need more sage.”
Ray chuckled, the sound gradually becoming a full-on laugh with a tinge of exhausted hysteria at the edges. “Ah, Roxie. Of all the things I’ve imagined about you over the years, becoming the town witch wasn’t one of them. But it’s all right. I like it.”
Harriet withered like a delicate bloom left out in the hot sun too long, slowly and with a sort of natural grace, but lifeless and irrelevant nonetheless. The strange sensation I’d felt earlier returned, stronger this time. Like helium filling a balloon, it expanded inside me until I knew if someone else with my ability to see auras was present, they’d see it spill from mine. What would it look like, and what did it mean? I had no idea and no interest in analyzing it. I just knew it made me smile.
Then it made me wonder what exactly Ray had been imagining about me over the years. My cheeks burned but I did my best to play it off. “So I’ll call Valerie and see if she’s got more white sage and some other stuff.” It seemed like a good time to go through my bag and make sure my lip gloss had not escaped, that my phone still held a charge, and dig out any old mints and cough drops that had fallen to the bottom. Anything to keep from looking Ray Travis in the eye.
Harriet stood. “Well, I need to get started with closing up. See you Saturday, Roxanne. Bright and early.” She stalked off, hands clenched into fists at her side. I didn’t like her ordering me around but I liked the idea of a bunch of little kids being scared by a ghost even less, so I would be there.
In my capacity as the town witch. A giggle slipped out.
“What’s so funny?” The intimate drawl in Ray’s voice did funny things to my insides.
I rolled my eyes. “The town witch. Oh god, can you imagine the look on Marjorie Hickfield’s face?”
“Even better, the look on your momma’s face.”
The image came to me and I was done for. Laughter, silly and too loud and cleansing as a short spring rain, spilled out. Ray joined in with his own booming laugh. It was a sound I recalled from late nights with him, after he’d worked too many hours and gone way past tired into a zone of hyper exhaustion. Sometimes a beer or two would calm him enough to sleep, taking the edge off the day and the occasional ugliness of the job and his frayed nerves. Sometimes hard loving was what he needed, pinning me underneath him to find some measure of peace inside me. The idea that I could be a source of peace to anyone, but especially a good man like Ray, had left me confused. Scared. I didn’t trust it. Not back then, anyway.
The laughter died out and I pushed the past away. Ray leaned on the table, taking my hand in his. I pulled back, wary of the look in his eyes. He took the hint gracefully, acknowledging with a small nod and a rueful smile. He said, “I had a chance to bend the mayor’s ear today and I took full advantage.”
“Oh yeah?”
“I told him about the diary pages and we’re going to consider those evidence that Holt lied in his report. I still need proof but it will get the ball rolling. I need you to bring them to the sheriff’s department tomorrow.”
I nodded. “How much longer you think we have before Andrew Parker makes his feelings known?”
“Don’t you reckon he’s already done that?”
“With Holt? Yeah, I guess he has. You ever heard anything about the Parkers being practitioners? Rozella told me to stay away from them once but she never got specific.”
Ray lowered his voice. “Carver said he’s heard things.”
I moved closer. “Like what?”
“His grandpa knew them when they were still selling moonshine. There was a story that went around about some fella trying to set himself up as competition. He was eaten alive by spiders, from the inside. What’s that sound like to you?”
“Like I’m never going to sleep again.” I’d have to deal with them eventually but I was even less eager now. “She might not have been killed by her family. It could have been the baby’s father. The fact that she had some ability, though, tells me to look at the Parkers for the witch who cursed Holt.”
“And that tells me her family is still at the top of my suspects list.”
Squealing tires followed by yelling came in from the street. Ray and I ran for the door, expecting to find the ghost somewhere outside. Instead I spotted Daniel at the end of the block, standing on the corner and hollering. It was an eerie sound he made, feral and terrifying and unlike anything I’d ever heard from him or anyone else before. Like something out of a primitive past.
I removed my glasses to see into the auric spectrum easier, scanning the night for Britney’s ghost. There was nothing but a few streaks of lingering color in the air, flowing in the wake of a car hurtling around the court square far over the speed limit.
“Bubba, what are you doing?” I jogged to his side, cringing as he let loose with another scream. It made my skin crawl and the hair on the back of my neck rise, every nerve in my body telling me to run the other way.
Daniel laughed. “Trying to scare off those idiots.” He pointed at the car as it came back around, running a red light.
The car was full of teenage boys. One of them leaned out of the window. “Britney Parker, show us your ghost tits!” Their laughter was drowned out by the sound of the car’s crappy lawnmower engine.
Daniel opened up with another nerve-wracking scream. I slapped at his arm. “Stop that! Jesus, what the hell is that?”
Grinning, he said, “An honest to God rebel yell right there. Scary as fuck, huh?”
A siren sounded before I could answer. Ray had moved his patrol car to cut off the kids. Blue lights cut through the dark as Ray stalked to the kids. “Get your asses outta that car right now,” he commanded. “This ain’t God damn Mardi Gras!”
“You tell ‘em, Deputy Hot Pants,” Daniel called out. I slapped at him again, trying with no luck to drag him away.
“Let’s go, Bubba. Now.”
“Ah, come on. I wanna watch the kids get in trouble.”
“No, you don’t, now let’s go.”
“It might do some good. Help with crowd control.” Whatever he was talking about, he sure thought it was funny.
“What do you mean, crowd control?”
“Oh, well. Uh.” He laughed again. “It would seem Blythe is now a popular spot for ghost hunters.” He pointed at the line of kids Ray was currently yelling at. “And idiot thrill seekers.”
“You have got to be kidding me.”
“A guy came into the pool hall with an EMF reader, asking for directions to the Mexican place where you saw the ghost. Said he read about it on a message board.”
Shit. Of all the things this situation didn’t need, that ranked pretty damned high.
Chapter 33
I woke the next morning to find another envelope of diary pages waiting on the front porch, secured under a rock to keep from blowing away in the blustery spring wind.
He won’t tell me anymore, the fucking bastard. Not unless I’m willing to pay for it. The kind of payment he wants, never again. I told him I’d kill him if he ever tried to touch me again. I’m not a little girl anymore. I’m not scared of him. I told him he’ll never touch my daughter. He laughed and laughed. Psychotic old bastard. I don’t need him to teach me magic anymore either. It’s in our blood. Part of who we are. So what if not every person in the family has it. Not all of us have blonde hair either. But it’s there. So what do I need a teacher for, especially now? I’m more powerful than I’ve ever been.
I think that means the baby will be a witch too. Her power is part of me right now. I can use it to protect us both. Keep the old man away from us long enough to get things settled with the move. I wish I could trust Momma but I know she’d tell. There’s no trusting Daddy at all, he’s too scared of the old man. I think Peggy knows, without being told. I think she knows a lot without being told. She stays too locked in her own head to do anything about it. That’s what the bastard did to her. What he tried to do to me.
What I don’t get is, why did it break her? Her soul is in a million pieces because of what that man did to us, but I survived. Why me and not her? What did he do to Daddy to make him willing to let what happened to his sister happen to his daughter? And Momma…I can’t even think about her. She takes her fucking pills and drinks her wine and doesn’t give a damn about anybody but herself. Just like Daddy. All they care about is their own comfort, their reputations. The family name. The family name is shit as far as I’m concerned.
As soon as we leave, my daughter and I won’t be Parkers anymore. That bastard will never find us. He can pretend all he wants that he owns us all but he doesn’t. He can pretend he’s immortal too but he’s not. That, he does know. I can see it in his eyes. He knows his time is coming and he knows Hell is waiting for him. He just wants to do everything he can in the time he has left to hold on to control of the people who are scared of him.
That won’t be me.
It was time to think about security cameras. I wanted to know who was leaving these pages, and why. Why me instead of police, why send them at all? What did the person hope to gain from it? Justice for Britney? Revenge? It was maddening, and annoying, and I wanted answers.
I read the latest pages over again. I didn’t need a name to know who the old bastard was. Parker family patriarch Andrew, had to be. Less clear was what happened to both her aunt Peggy and to Britney. It wasn’t hard to come to an ugly conclusion but the diary pages were way too vague for anything but conjecture. I gathered up all the materials Ray asked for and prepared for the trip to town. He was in a meeting with the sheriff so I left the sealed envelope at the front desk and escaped before anyone could try to make me wait. There were some things I had to get straight in my head before I saw Ray again.
One of them was how I felt about Blake. Our tenuous connection had been fraying for months but it still shocked me it would break so fast, and over magic. I had wanted so badly to find someone I could be myself with, someone who wouldn’t be afraid of me and the things I could do. Blake had seemed like the perfect person for that, at least on the surface. He’d never been exactly stable. When I first met him I had to clean up the aftermath of his ill-advised summoning of a demon. First I thought of him as a bad guy, then I saw him as someone who had been manipulated by the demon. There was an emptiness at his core I had mistaken for loneliness, something I could empathize with. Now, I wasn’t so sure. Swinging from one extreme to the other, dabbling in dark sorcery to wanting to strip me of my power because I had a spirit familiar, was too much.
The black hole of his aura was too much.
Sleep had been patchy the night before but mercifully dreamless. I spent the afternoon on the sofa, napping occasionally. At one point I remembered to call Valerie and talk to her about supplies for use in warding the pageant location. She donated all she had and offered to help. We agreed to meet at the convention center before the festivities began the next day. After that I slept some more, waiting for night to fall. When you hunt ghosts for a living, you do a lot of waiting for night to fall.
I woke to the sound of a drunk vampire singing Rhinestone Cowboy. Dragging a throw pillow over my head, I attempted to block out the horror and go back to sleep. Daniel was in the mood to work his way through Glen Campbell’s greatest hits, launching into Galveston at top volume. I gave up, following the awful noise and the smell of coffee into the kitchen.
The sight of Ray at the kitchen table made me stop short.
Daniel handed me a cup. “See. Told ya I could wake her up.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t have to be so enthusiastic about it.” Ray spoke to Daniel but kept his eyes on me.
I resisted the urge to run to a hairbrush and instead drank the coffee. “Any progress with all that stuff?” I meant the envelope I’d dropped off at the sheriff’s department.
Ray said, “On second look it’s not as helpful as I’d hoped.”
“I was afraid the diary entries would be too vague.”
“They’re also undated and unsigned. Right now for all we can prove, they could be forgeries. I have to find the diary the pages were torn out of. It’s not in her apartment, I went through it again today, so whoever’s been sending it to you piecemeal needs to cough up the whole thing.”
I opened the fridge, searching for something to eat. “Sounds like you’ve been busy.”
“Well, we don’t all get to lounge around on the couch and take naps all day.” Suffused with warmth, the teasing note in his voice didn’t bother me at all.
If only it did, I might have been a lot less confused. “Jealous?”
“Nah,” Ray said. “There’s not room for two on that couch. Now, if you’d been someplace a little roomier.”
Daniel saved me from having to respond. “Okay, kids, I’m still here and I’m very uncomfortable with the direction this is going. Let’s talk about our plan for tonight.”
I gave him a brief look of thanks. “I’m worn out. As far as I’m concerned, I’m content to just hang out in town and see if Britney shows up anywhere.”
“That doesn’t sound very exciting,” Daniel complained.
“I’ve got a major magical working scheduled for tomorrow. I need to take it easy for a change.” The vampire pouted. “You’re free to go play in the traffic and rebel yell all over the county. I plan to get some food and sit on my butt somewhere.”
Ray said, “How about my truck? I’m off duty but there’s no way I could stay home tonight. I figured on doing my own patrol, about like you said. Be out in case she shows up somewhere.”
Daniel wisely kept his mouth shut. I could think of no excuse to turn Ray down so I said yes. Besides, he had a scanner so we’d hear any reports of possible ghost activity that were called in. That’s what I would tell Daniel later when he inevitably cornered me alone. If he didn’t like it I’d take away his Conway Twitty CDs.
We left Daniel as he moussed his hair, singing Southern Nights at the mirror. Calling it singing was a kindness but I didn’t give him grief because he, strangely enough, didn’t give me grief. Once at Ray’s house I waited in the living room as he showered and changed. At first I flipped through channels on the TV, then I
got bored. Curious about any changes in the house in the years since I’d had a key, I wandered around, eventually arriving at the bedroom upstairs.
Ray still kept his badge and gun on the dresser, right in the center. Next to them was the faded mojo hand I’d made for him when we dated. I picked it up, marveling again that he’d held on to it all this time. With all the work going into new protective charms, it had slipped my mind to take this one and recharge it. I listened for the shower, hearing it still running, then I sat on the floor with the mojo hand in front of me.
Deep focus work was becoming easier and easier. What used to take hours of grounding, centering, gathering power, and finally casting the spell, I could now do in minutes. Tasting rain, I sent my intention into the small flannel bag, filling its contents with power. My safe from harm spell, now supercharged and stronger than ever.
I returned to awareness. Ray stood in the doorway to the master bath, holding a towel around his waist. I shook my head, embarrassed, and stood. “This has to stop happening.” I returned the mojo hand to the dresser.
“What’s that?”
“Catching you in a towel.” I turned to leave the bedroom.
“There was a time when you liked me in even less.”
I would not look back. I would not look back. No, I absolutely would not. “Hurry up and get dressed. I need some food.”
“Daniel told me.”
I froze in the doorway, one foot in the hall. “Told you what?”
“That you broke up with the guy you were seeing.”
I whirled to face him. “That disloyal rat bastard! He had no right to tell you.”
Ray had come half way across the room when my back was to him. “Why is it a secret? Is there some reason you didn’t want me to know?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You never do. About anything. Go on.” He waved toward the hall. “I need to get dressed. The hell if I’m gonna be naked in front of someone who can’t have an adult conversation.” Storm clouds darkened his face, his eyes a deep twilight blue.
